Tomb of the Diver

The Tomb of the Diver is an important archaeological monument, found by the Italian archaeologist Mario Napoli, on 3 June 1968, during his excavations of a small necropolis about 1,5 Km south of the Greek city of Paestum in Magna Graecia, now Southern Italy. The tomb is now displayed in the museum at Paestum.

It is a grave made of five local limestone slabs forming the four lateral walls and the roof, the floor being excavated in the natural rock ground. The five slabs, accurately bonded with plaster, formed a chamber sized - roughly - 215x100x80 cm. All the five slabs forming the monument were painted, on the interior sides, with the "true fresco" technique. The paintings on the four walls depict a symposium scene, while the cover slab was occupied by the famous scene that gives the tomb its name: a young man diving into a curling and waving stream of water. Two masters have been distinguished, the south wall being by a less impressive artist than the others. [Holloway, p. 373.]

When the tomb was discovered, these surprising frescos revealed its importance, as they appear to be the only example of Greek painting with figured scenes dating from the Orientalizing, Archaic, or Classical periods to survive in its entirety. Among the thousands of Greek tombs known from this time (roughly 700–400 BC), this is the only one to have been decorated with frescoes of human subjects.» [Holloway, p. 365.]

In the interior of the tomb only a few objects were found: near the corpse (widely supposed to be a young man, despite the heavily deteriorated state of the skeleton) were a turtle shell [Probably part of a "lyre" whose wooden frame had probably rotted away.] , two "aryballos" and an Attic "lekythos". The last object, in black-figure technique from about 480 BC, helped the discoverer and other scholars to date the tomb to about 470 BC.

Gallery

References

ources

* R. Ross Holloway. " [http://www.ajaonline.org/pdfs/110.3/AJA1103_Holloway.pdf The Tomb of the Diver] ", in "American Journal of Archaeology", Vol. 110, n. 3, July 2006 (pp. 365-388). en
* Angela Pontrandolfo, Agnès Rouveret, Marina Cipriani. "The painted tombs of Paestum". Pandemos Editions, Paestum, 2004 ISBN 88-87744-11-4; other versions: French ISBN 88-87744-13-0; German ISBN 88-87744-12-2; Italian ISBN 88-87744-10-6;
* Agnès Rouveret. "La Tombe du Plongeur et les fresques étrusques: témoignages sur la peinture grecque", dans "Revue Archéologique", 1974, Fascicule 1, pp. 15-32.
* Pierre Somville. "La tombe du plongeur à Paestum", dans "Revue de l'histoire de Religions".Paris, PUF, Tome 196, fascicule 1, July 1979, pp. 41-51.
* Daisy Warland. "La Tombe du Plongeur: Étude de la relation entre le symposion et le plongeon." dans "Revue de l'histoire de Religions". Paris, PUF, Tome 213, fascicule 2, 1996, p. 143–60 - [http://rhr.revues.org/document1217.html Abstract on line 23 August 2007] . accessed 20 September 2007.
* Daisy Warland. "Que représente la fresque de la paroi Ouest de la tombe au plongeur de Poseidonia?", in "Kernos", 1999, n. 12, p. 195-206.